Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Structural Injustice and Ethical Consumption

  • Published:
The Journal of Ethics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper examines the role played by consumers in producing what Iris Marion Young calls structural injustice. Through their consumption of a commodity, consumers can contribute to injustice, often as a result of their ignorance toward the ethical footprint of the commodity in question. After establishing that consumers are routinely implicated in structural injustice (Section I), I defend Young’s scepticism towards attributing blame to those who contribute to injustice through acts of consumption, whether their contribution to injustice result from a state of moral or factual ignorance (Sections II-IV). I then examine the action-guiding implications of Young’s work and introduce the concept of conspicuousness to narrow the vast range of possibilities for action (Section V). I also suggest a revision to Young’s derivation of the responsibility she ascribes to people for ameliorating injustice.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. For evidence of the use of child and slave labour in cocoa cultivation, see Balch (2021), DR TV (2010; 2014), Hinch (2018), NORC (2020).

  2. E.g., Barry and MacDonald (2016), Beck (2020), Goodin and Barry (2021), Nussbaum (2011).

  3. I would like to thank an anonymous referee for pressing the importance of considering such an example.

  4. An indication of how widespread meat-eating is are rates of vegetarianism – 5% in the U.S. in 2018 (Judkis 2018), somewhat higher in European countries but rarely in double figures. India records the highest rate of vegetarianism at 38%.

  5. Slote (1982: 72) suggests that ancient Greeks were “unable” to draw the correct conclusion about slavery.

  6. The comparison does not require that we deem the consumption of meat to be as morally heinous as slavery but rather that we, like ancient Greeks are purported to have done, fail to draw an obvious moral conclusion towards an obviously unethical practice.

  7. Food Marketing Institute: https://www.fmi.org/our-research/supermarket-facts, accessed on 10th May, 2021. Depending on the websites one consults, Amazon sells over 12 million products; if one includes products sold by independent retailers via Amazon Marketplace, the number exceeds 350 million.

  8. The presence of palm oil in chocolate would open a veritable catalogue relating consumption to structural injustice (Haivan 2022).

  9. Some theorists of wilful ignorance, e.g. Wieland (2017), hold condition (i) to be non-necessary.

  10. I call this her “official” view because she repeats it, often in programmatic fashion, many times (2011: 96, 105–107, 109, 113, 123, 142, 166, 173, 175).

References

  • Abbate, Cheryl. 2020. Meat eating and moral responsibility: exploring the moral distinctions between meat eaters and puppy torturers. Utilitas 32: 398–415.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Balch, Oliver. 2021. Mars, Nestlé and Hershey to face child slavery lawsuit in US. The Guardian, 12th February, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face-landmark-child-slavery-lawsuit-in-us, accessed on 13th May, 2022.

  • Barry, Christian, and Kate MacDonald. 2016. How should we conceive of individual consumer responsibility to address labour injustices? In Global justice and international labour, ed. Yossi Dahan, Hanna Lerner and Faina Milman-Sivan, 92–118. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Beck, Valentin. 2020. Two forms of responsibility: reassessing Young on structural injustice. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2020.1786307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bond, Patrick. 2003. Against global apartheid: South Africa meets the World Bank, IMF and international finance. Second edition. London: Zed Books.

  • Bradford, Gwen. 2017. Hard to know. In Responsibility: the epistemic condition, ed. Philip Robichaud and Jan Willem Wieland, 180–197. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Buchanan, Allen. 1996. Judging the past. Hastings Center Report 26: 25–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DR TV. 2010. The dark side of chocolate child trafficking and illegal child labor in the cocoa industry. Copenhagen.

  • DR TV. 2014. Shady chocolate business. Copenhagen.

  • Goodin, Robert, and Christian Barry. 2021. Responsibility for structural injustice: a third thought. Politics Philosophy and Economics 20: 339–356.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guerrero, Alexander. 2017. Intellectual difficulty and moral responsibility. In Responsibility: the epistemic condition, ed. Philip Robichaud and Jan Willem Wieland, 199–217. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Guthrie, W. 1971. The Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haivan, Max. 2022. Palm oil: the grease of empire. London: Pluto Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hartford, Anna. 2019. How much should a person know? Moral inquiry and demandingness. Moral Philosophy and Politics 6: 41–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hinch, Ronald. 2018. Chocolate slavery,forced labour, child labour and the state. In A handbook of food crime, eds. Allison Gray, and Ronald Hinch, 77–92. Bristol: Policy Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Husak, Douglas and Craig Callender. 1994. Wilful ignorance, knowledge, and the “equal culpability” thesis. Wisconsin Law Review 6: 29–69.

  • Judkis, Maura. 2018. You might think there are more vegetarians than ever. You’d be wrong, Washington Post, 3rd August, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2018/08/03/you-might-think-there-are-more-vegetarians-than-ever-youd-be-wrong/, accessed on 29th May, 2022.

  • Marx, Karl. 1867. Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, erster Band, Marx-Engels Werke, Band 23, Berlin: Dietz Verlag.

  • Moody-Adams, Michele. 1997. Fieldwork in familiar places: morality, culture, and philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • NORC. 2020. Assessing progress in reducing child labor in cocoa production in cocoa growing areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, https://www.norc.org/PDFs/Cocoa%20Report/NORC%202020%20Cocoa%20Report_English.pdf, accessed on 14th May, 2022.

  • Norcross, Alastair. 2004. Puppies, Pigs, and people: eating meat and marginal cases. Philosophical Perspectives 18: 229–245.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nussbaum, Martha. 2011. Foreword. In I. Young, responsibility for justice, ix-xxv. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pellegrin, Pierre. 2013. Natural slavery (trans. E. Zoli Fioltas). In The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s politics, eds. M. Deslauriers, and P. Destrée, 92–116. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Piazza, Jared, Matthew Ruby, Steve Loughman, Mischel Luong, and Juliana Kulik, Hanne Watkins and Mirra Seigerman. 2015. Rationalizing meat consumption. The 4Ns. Appetite 91: 114–128.

  • Pleasants, Nigel. 2008. Institutional wrongdoing and Moral Perception. Journal of Social Philosophy 39(1): 96–115.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosen, Gideon. 2003. Culpability and ignorance. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103: 61–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sarch, Alexander. 2018. Willful ignorance in law and morality. Philosophy Compass 13: 1–11.

  • Singer, Peter. 1972. Famine, affluence, and morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs 1: 229–243.

    Google Scholar 

  • Slote, Michael. 1982. Is virtue possible? Analysis 42: 70–76.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Holly. 1983. Culpable ignorance. Philosophical Review. XCII: 543–571.

  • Vanderheiden, Steve. 2016. The obligation to know: information and the burdens of citizenship. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19: 297–311.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wadman, Meredith. 1999. Gore under fire in controversy over South Africa AIDS drug law. Nature 399: 717–718.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wieland, Jan Willem. 2017. Willful ignorance. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20: 105–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Bernard. 1993. Shame and necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Young, Iris. 2003. Political responsibility and structural injustice. Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas. https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/12416/politicalresponsibilityandstructuralinjustice-2003.pdf?sequence=1, accessed on 20th May, 2022.

  • Young, Iris. 2011. Responsibility for justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The author thanks two referees from the Journal for their sagacious comments which have improved the result.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. York University, Toronto, Canada

    Mark Peacock

Authors
  1. Mark Peacock
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark Peacock.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Revised submission for Journal of Ethics for exclusive editorial consideration.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Peacock, M. Structural Injustice and Ethical Consumption. J Ethics 27, 191–210 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-023-09430-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-023-09430-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation